Haunted Haunts
by CC-645
Summary: This story is quite old, maybe I put it up out of season, but how cares! In this one-shot, Anakin, Darra, Tru and Ferus crack jokes, have an incounter with the otherworldly, and save the Galaxy, as all good Jedi must.


**Haunted Haunts**

Here is how it all started:

Anakin Skywalker, Tru Veld, Ferus Olin and Darra Thel Tanis had just returned from the Euceron mission. _Strange_ Anakin thought to himself, _how only two missions worth of saving each other can bring together a group of such differing personalities._ Indeed, despite Anakin's problems and Ferus's rule-abiding nature, the group was merrily chatting as they moved through the Temple corridors.

"Oya, I've got a good one!" Interceded Tru, "A toddler is resting in the crèche, Master Yoda feels bored so he hops on the poor child's bed and says, 'Little one, your father I am…' Wanting to impress the Grand Master, the child attempts to use a long word. Stabbing a finger in the green troll's direction, he announces, 'That's ludicrous!' or at least that was what he meant, in actuality it sounded like, 'Dat's Ludokresh!'"

The group bursts into laughter and are bent over double so no-one sees the green troll in question come around the corner. "Remember that I do," he grumbles, "On investigation I was put, said that 'truly wonderful the mind of a child was' I should have not…"

Anakin decided to cut in with a witty – or so he hoped joke, "Master Windu walks into a bar … bang! Three other Jedi Masters walk into a bar, bang! One would have thought that they'd at least move it."

After everyone recovered from Anakin's joke, Tru puts forth another, "Pale-grey Malak lost a jaw; he can't eat now, any-more!"

Darra, not to be outdone, chimed in in a serious storyteller voice, "So Bastila Shan is meditating on the Star Forge when Darth Malak comes in, 'Bastila, Revan has entered the system…' Not even bothering to show any respect, she asks, 'So?' An annoyed Malak says, "Well, if he disables the disruptor beam and the Republic gets here, the fit will really hit the shan…' He should have concerned himself more with his survival, not being family friendly…."

_While the four rapscallions – even Ferus – are bent over laughing, a certain spirit stews in the netherworld of the Force, oh she will show them, there is no question about that, but how?_

Later that day, or shorty before bedtime, the group met up once again for a quick game of dejarick and a chat, which was started by Tru, "I can't believe it, ever since the Sith showed up on Naboo, they stopped using them for crèche stories, now they are down to plain-old ghost tales." Darra emphatically agreed with the ridiculousness, but Anakin wasn't ready to join in,

"Well, on Tatooine we kids were told ghost stories. You see, it's all about how realistic you tell them, if you have your serious Ghost wandering around in a frilly pink dress," everyone blanched at that image, "…no-one will believe it and think it stupid. However, some stories I've heard are believable, the Sand People, have this wizard tale about these three guys and a droid that massacred them like four thousand years ago…"

Ferus snorted derisively, but Darra urged Anakin to continue, "So, what's it about?"

Anakin shifted in his seat and began, "In forgotten times, when the only settlement of men was Anchorhead, the Tusken Raiders of Tatooine roamed the deserts and dunes freely. Around three hundred years before what we call the Treaty of Coruscant, a Jedi lead his team on a mission there. We know him as Revan, but the Sand People know him as the Man with Brands of Fire. It is said that when one of the tribes broke a negotiated piece, he and Man of Metal slaughtered thousands of Tuskens in less than a day. For millennia the Raiders feared the grounds around the fallen enclave, for they believe his spirit returns each year to the place of his conquest."

Ferus once again humffed disdainfully, "That's just ludicrous, ghosts don't even exist, and what Jedi would slaughter thousands of innocents?"

Anakin was not amused, yeah he knew Ferus as the more stringent follower of the Code, and a strong critic to mysticism, but that didn't mean he had the right to cast aside everything he said… "Yeah well, Master Garen tells me that not too long ago, the Sith were thought of as nothing more than mere legend, if not myth. Look how that turned out. And don't you dare lecture me on the Sand People, you know nothing of them, aside from what your vaunted archives might say. I lived on Tatooine for nine years, and I know about them – first hand! They are vile, vicious, unprincipled… Don't get involved with things beyond your area of expertise!" Ferus just shook his head as Anakin slammed a fist on the game board.

"Whatever you say, Skywalker… and ghosts aren't real anyway," He shook his head and stood up, "Now I'm leaving, I have to be on time for tomorrow's classes…"

"Anakin," Darra tried to reason with him, "He's always like that…"

"Yeah, but that chuba face didn't have to go all 'professor' on me. I was just contributing to the discussion… I never said ghosts are real or anything, and he…."

_That aforementioned spirit was getting an idea … a devious, evil, horrible, and sneaky idea..._

It was late, 0048 late, and Anakin and Tru were on a sneaky trip to a garbage heap outside the Temple. It was late, 0050 late, and Ferus Olin was sneaking after his fellow Padawans to report them to the Masters, get them into trouble, and get some prise for his _courage_. It was slightly later, two minutes later, and Darra Thel Tanis was armed with a roll of space tape, macrobinoculars, and a pilfered stun gun. She was sneakily following the other three so that she could get Ferus back for being a jerk and make sure he didn't get Anakin and Tru into trouble. It was late, not that Force Spirits cared, and two of them were ready to implement their sinister revenge. It was late, and everyone was ready and in position.

Darra didn't know what her master was doing, not looking after her Padawan, and that suited her just fine. She was covered in a black robe from the storage rooms, and held a pair of binocs in her hands. Leaning atop a deserted building's roof, she had a clear view of Skywalker and Veld rummaging around the scrapheaps, she also could see Ferus Olin crouching behind a corner, with a holocam in hand, that jerk!

Here is what Ferus experienced:

He was positively bursting with joy, he had caught that disrespectful twit Skywalker in the act! His holocam had a clear shot! All he needed was a few more minutes of footage, and he'd take it to Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu. They would thank him. They would say _he_ was the perfect Jedi. They would pay less attention to that dust ball brat! **Skywalker** would get punished… And then his cam shorted out. He spun around, only to see a black from melt into the shadows. He turned back, thinking it was his imagination, but then a sheet of durasteel behind him scraped against something. He spun around, hilt in hand, but not ignited. Still whatever it was scurried away…

He chose to follow, stupid of him. He rounded a corner and smacked into something soft and heavy … or rather something. And then that sheet of durasteel slid off the container it was perched on, and blocked the way he came in by. And before him stood a shimmering blue figure… a shimmering blue figure in a deep cowl and armour, and no face visible. It shrieked, no not the pathetic excuse for a sweeking door from the Lord of the Rings films, but a full-on, blood-curdling, fear-inspiring shriek, worthy of any true Nazgul. And oh horror! It was echoed from behind him!

He spun around, panicked out of his wits, to be met with a glowy blue stun bolt, right smack-bang-centre into his stomach. He collapsed, again wondering why there was something soft, but that train of though was cut off because another figure materialised off to his nine, and it too shrieked. He passed out, from both the terror and the stun bolt's effects.

Here is what Anakin and Tru experienced:

"Hey Anakin, is that a motivator for those IG droids?"

"Let me see Tru, wait, what on Corulag is that!" That remark came around the time of the first scream. Quickly the two drew and ignited their sabers and clambered up atop the neared heap. From there, they could see two glowing blue figures moving toward another inert one. Then one of the blueys turned in their direction, from beneath a hood peered two yellow eyes. The figure laughed gleefully, drew a double bladed saber, also shimmering ethereally, and raced after them.

Here is what Darra Thel Tanis experienced:

She was ready in ambush, there came Ferus, he would check around the corner and she'd stun him, tie him up, and leave him there. She'd go back to the Temple, and no-one would be the wiser as she didn't inform the two others of her plan. None would even suspect her.

It all went smoothly, until Ferus chose to forego caution and barrelled around the corner and into her. Then came the moment with the blue guys. She reflexively shot the first one to scream, but Ferus had turned to her at that time, and the bolt hit him instead. He collapsed atop of her, pinning her to the ground. The clover figure shrieked, and turned toward her. For a moment, the hood melted away to reveal a face that of Bastila Shan, preserved forever in one of the archive's busts, but the _illusion_ faded and it was replaced with that frightening visage. That figure looked off into the distance, and inexplicably ran off, leaving her at the mercy of the armour-clad redeemed-Sith Lord resembling one.

Here is what happened to Palpatine:

Darth Sidious laughed hideously in a dark ally, he saw the spirit of Bastila Shan chasing his future apprentice and one other toward the Temple, and the spirit of Revan chasing the Thel Tanis girl. That was a nice trick he thought.

He walked over to the unconscious form of Ferus Olin, and seeing the roll of space tape abandoned beside him, and at the urging of the Dark Side of the Force, he tied him up, and gagged him. Rubbing his hands together in victory, he moved off to his secret lair.

Unfortunately his was so engrossed in being evil, that he didn't bother to watch his feet. A power pack, and a few exposed wires left behind by Anakin tripped him. And he was unable to right himself. He fell, and rolled, and rolled, and the next day the citizens of the Republic would be wondering where their beloved Chancellor got to.

This is how it all wrapped up:

Six months later his body would be found, and the coroner would deduce that the old man stumbled down a junk pile and broke his neck while rolling off it. The Jedi would use the Force to see what happened and discover that Anakin Skywalker was indeed the Chosen One, saving their rears inadvertently while trying to escape a scary noise. Too bad Dooku was still around….

Ferus Olin would get found two days later, suffering exposure and dehydration. He would be brought back to the Temple, and being the sensible little Jedi he is he would deduce that this mishap was the Will of the Force. So sometime in the future, he would become normal by human standards, play Sabacc every week, pull pranks on other Jedi, and become one of Anakin's best friends.

Darra Thel Tanis would be safe, at least Granta Omega, she would confide in Anakin and Tru though, after the official investigation was complete.

So as things tend to do in fiction, everything worked out fine and they lived happily ever after, that was until Dooku and Geonosis….

The End


End file.
